The Harrachov Exchange

The Harrachov Exchange is based the ‘main character’ from a film. Combining live action, stop-frame animation and chemical processing techniques, this film explores the working of an arcane power which, like a black hole or immensely powerful electromagnet, exerts a far-reaching and irresistible force upon certain objects and materials. It willfully seduces, centralises and internalises the objects. Each object – and set of objects – has its own ‘tale to tell’, identified through unique characteristic movements and individually associated sounds. Thus the film’s soundtrack, pace, rhythm and structure are formed directly by the actions of objects and the evolution of The Exchange itself – a kind of ‘cinéma concret’. Piece by piece, a large, kinetic, fully-functioning and menacing machine system assembles itself. So the film begets a machine – The Harrachov Exchange. This machine can exist independently of the film which produced it, freestanding, outwit the narrative and the medium. This contraption is the ‘living embodiment’ of the entire cast, plot, structure and soundtrack of the film. But there’s a tense interdependence between the film and the film’s ‘product’, like the pitiful monster’s attachment to Dr Frankenstein. Over time, the machine will become rusty, squeaky, mythical, an object of curiosity.